"Both the Army and AF have gotten very good at shaping the battlefield and forcing the enemy to fight our fight. But we have been fighting opponents willing to just get shaped."
I would argue that no opponent is "willing to just get shaped". Instead, we are incredibly good and finding and exploiting their weaknesses in order to make them "shapeable". Our most recent opponents do not have a history of being willing to be shaped. The Afghani Mujahideen defeated a Cold War Superpower that shared a common border with Afghanistan. The Iraqi Army fought an 8 year war against the Iranians that resulted in a draw despite the use on both sides of massive human wave assaults, chemical weapons, and modern (for that time period) conventional weapons. The methods with which we executed our operations in Afghanistan were very different from how we executed in Iraq. Our flexibility (and success) indicates we are very much capable of finding a way of working inside the OODA loop of a verity of foes. And I think you underestimate the enemies we've faced since 2001 (and before), and our ability to adapt our traditional strengths to counter an enemy, when you say our success has more to do with the enemy's willingness to be shaped rather than our ability to find a way to shape them.
"Your perspective is highly colored by our success in Iraq."
Let me offer you a little better insight into my perspective. In the last month and a half I have flown almost nothing but air to air training sorties against a quantitatively superior air threat simulating SU-27 fighters armed with their latest beyond visual range weapons. They are allowed to use Western tactics to counter our weapons and tactics. On some sorties we have been outnumbered by as much as 3 to 1. When I'm not flying those sorties, I am in the midst planning an exercise with the Canadian Navy in which we will fight against numerically superior forces in a littoral environment with full electronic jamming and an Aegis quality surface to air missile threat. Between now and then we will continue our training with tactical air control parties and special forces units spinning up to deploy to places that are both in and not in the news. Those scenarios range in scope from taking out a single vehicle or command post, to attacking an armored convoy maneuvering to engage within 1km of the men controlling us. Finally, we are already developing a training plan to ensure we are ready for our next deployment to OIF which will happen in less than a year. The idea that the Air Force is sitting around stroking itself over the success of its most recent operations is just as flawed as the suggestion that the Air Force is somehow stuck in a Cold War mindset. We have written, absorbed and filed the lessons learned from OIF, and are in the midst of prepping for the next fight. Our assumption is that fight will be somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. Beyond that, our assumptions are wide open.
"If you were in the PLAAF, how would you fight the US?"
Economically. China has nothing to gain from a military conflict with the West, and it knows it. But lets say we end up at war anyway. Let me ask you this...do you see any way we could defeat the Chinese military in a conventional conflict? Do you think our best course of action would be to go toe to toe with the PLA and duke it out like two traditional armies? Or would we be better served by finding an alternative course to defeat them before we meet them on the battlefield. I am getting the impression that the Army is envisioning massive troop movements as we engage the Chinese. I think that would be suicide. We are no longer an agrarian or an industrial society. We cannot fight like we are. We are a technology driven society, and that is our greatest strength. We need to use that strength to defeat an enemy with Chinese strengths.
"Our greatest enemy is complacency."
I can't vouch for the Army, but the assumption of the Air Force is that the enemy is good and getting better.
"I see it in your posts."
Than I am misleading you. When I say I am not a big supporter of the F-22, it is because I recognize that we need to move to the next level of aerial warfare. The assumption of the Navy prior to Pearl Harbor was that the Navy with the most powerful battleships would win. Then the Japanese destroyed our Pacific fleet using aircraft carriers. The assumption during the Cold War was mutually assured destruction was an inevitable stalemate that would end only when one side made a mistake and triggered a global thermonuclear war. And then Reagan defeated the Soviets by outspending them, and they crumbled without firing a shot. The assumption before 2001 was that we needed to be prepared to battle our worst threat with superior military hardware. Then a whackjob in a turban proved that with just 19 men, he could bring the world's only superpower temporarily to its knees and we never even fired a pistol. If a country like the one we live in, with the resources we have and the technology we've mastered, looks at a country like China and envisions fighting a conventional military battle we deserve our inevitable fate. Buy the Air Force 1000 F-22's, but when the Chinese launch an invasion of Taiwan, where are we going to base them. Buy the Air Force 1000 C-17's, but when the North Korean hoard streams into Seoul, and decimates the southern half of the Korean peninsula with biological agents, where are we going to land them? If the Army's game plan is to counter the Chinese, or Koreans, or Indians, or Yemenis with its current force structure (or with its current force structure times 2, or 3), then it is the Army that is mired in a Cold War mentality and is incapable of moving on. Fortunately, I don't believe that is the case.
Not quite. We are certainly trying to improve our ability to fight OIF type conflicts...that is the root of the whole Rumsfeld transformation and the development of strategically mobile medium forces. And while we have not completely stopped preparing for bigger fights, I am worried we aren't necessarily doing the right things to prepare for that. I guess you could sum my objections in two ways: One, that we are putting too much emphasis on OIF type fights at the expense of bigger possible fights, and Two, that the things we are doing to prepare for the bigger fights are not necessarily the best things.
"willing to just get shaped"
Fair enough. They don't want to get shaped, but they are not designed equipped and prepared to fight an information age war. They weren't 'willing' to just get shaped, but they were almost completely helpless to stop it or to shape us.
I guess I could make the case that they were 'willing' to get shaped because they weren't willing to do the things at the procurement and developmental levels to stop it. That is not quite fair to the Iraqis because they really never did or could have developed that capability. Future opponents may have that capability, and they may avail themselves of it.
You talked about the Afghans (it is worth noting that the Taliban was not the Mujahadin...they didn't exist until both the Soviets and Afghan Communists fell) and the Iraqis and Iranians. None of those opponents fought an information age war. It is not at all surprising that an information age military can get inside and stay inside the OODA loop of militaries not designed for that fight. The Iran Iraq war more closely resembled WWII, or even WWI, than the way we fought against Iraq. It was more about weight of numbers and material to much greater extent than anything we would do today. We were able to simply manipulate things by giving the Iraqis intel about where the Iranians were massing for human waves attack, and selling Iranians some effective anti-tank missiles. They may have had some modern equipment and other trappings of modernity, but there was nothing truly modern about the way they fought. Either each other, or us.
You are right that we have demonstrated the ability to adapt what we do to very different circumstances. But we have not demonstrated our ability to fight someone else fighting our style of info-war. Nor have we thought long and hard about how we would fight a very different style of info-war.
Let me offer you a little better insight into my perspective.
I don't think I said we were sitting on our laurels doing nothing. I questioned whether we're doing the right things. For instance you talked about training against 3 to 1 Su-27s using western tactics. Are you training three to one because that is the most we can handle, or because that is what we really expect? Are western tactics really the best for the situation? Have the Chinese developed better tactics for numerical superiority?
Now, I am out of my league, but if I were the PLAAF I would not settle for 3-1. I would probably take a cue from the Soviets turning the tide in the air during WWII...some places and times would be denuded of air power, and other places at times would have massive numerical superiority. Fight the fights you can win, and don't fight the ones you can't. My understanding is that the Soviets had a similar plan for the air. Sometimes there wouldn't be much at all and other times they would surge huge numbers. I am not the expert to say that is the best way to do it, but my gut reaction would be that on 9 out of ten sorties I wouldn't give you anything to fight, and on that tenth flight, you'd face 12 or 15 to one. I know in Europe we tankers trained to fight 3 to 1 up to 5 to 1 in tank battles. The problems was that we were outnumbered 10 to 1.
I'm very interested in what happens when our air force faces Aegis quality SAMs. It will be indiciative of which needs the most improvement. But while Aegis is good, is that the way our enemies will fight?
Again, I am not expert, but it seems to me that AWACS play a tremendously important role in how we fight in the air. What are all the different ways they could try to blind us and screw up our coordination, and what do we do about it?
Excerpt to freepmail:
do you see any way we could defeat the Chinese military in a conventional conflict?
Yes. But it depends on how you define conventional. If we fight a material fight against their material fight we would lose. If we fight an info age war against their material fight, I think we would win. If we fight an info age war against their info age war...then it is a huge 'dunno' and that is probably the most likely scenario because we aren't going to fight the first, and they aren't going to fight the second.
I am getting the impression that the Army is envisioning massive troop movements as we engage the Chinese.
Yes. We may very well have to. Take a different scenario, the 'resource' war with PRC attacking north to seize the oil and other resources as well as 'lebensraum' of Siberia. We're helping the Russians (for whatever reason). If you have grand plans of stopping them with air power without large ground forces, I think you'll find an enemy tank on your runway long before you finish killing them all.
"Our greatest enemy is complacency." I can't vouch for the Army, but the assumption of the Air Force is that the enemy is good and getting better.
And I would call that complacency about our improvement. ;-)~
The assumption of the Navy prior to Pearl Harbor was that the Navy with the most powerful battleships would win.
Historical note...that isn't fair to the USN. There were definitely both BB and CX advocates in our navy. Indeed, the same thing in the Japanese Imperial navy. It is worth noting that the Japanese were the ones with the biggest battleships. It was a theoretical question that could really only be finally resolved in battle.
If the Army's game plan is ... with its current force structure (or with its current force structure times 2, or 3)
Well, I think that is the point of info-war. It allows us to punch very much above our material weight...so long as we win the info war. But I think there is a valid point there. I think the Army needs to carefully consider how it would scale itself up quickly and effectively. Again, history offers a model, although not an answer. During the early stages of its rearmament when Germany was still operating under caps of the Versailles treaty, it was both very effective as a small scale force, and ended up being very effective as a cadre for rapid expansion.